Greek in the Pulpit

Corinth loved a speaker. It was a wealthy Roman colony where public speech was entertainment, career and status all at once, and orators who could hold a crowd were admired and paid. Bruce Winter, in Philo and Paul among the Sophists (1997), argued that the sophists, the travelling professional orators of the day, are the background against which Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1-4 should be read: a church that judged preachers the way the city judged orators. That is why some of them said 'I follow Paul' and others 'I follow Apollos' (1 Corinthians 1:12), and why some in Corinth would later say that Paul's 'speaking is of no account' (2 Corinthians 10:10). Apollos was 'an eloquent man, well versed in the Scriptures' (Acts 18:24), and there is no hint that Paul disapproved of him. The problem was not Apollos. It was a church that wanted a performer.

Into that city Paul says: 'When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.' In the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) the phrase is οὐ καθ’ ὑπεροχὴν λόγου ἢ σοφίας (ou kath’ hyperochēn logou ē sophias), literally not according to superiority of word or wisdom. ὑπεροχή (hyperochē, superiority, prominence) appears in only one other place in the New Testament, 1 Timothy 2:2, where it describes those in authority, the people at the top. Paul did not come with a speech designed to place him above them. καταγγέλλων (katangellōn, proclaiming) is a present active participle, nominative singular masculine: he refused superiority as he proclaimed.

This verse also shows why a preacher should check the text before he preaches a single word of it. The BSB has the testimony about God, and the SBLGNT prints τὸ μαρτύριον (to martyrion, the testimony). Other editions, including the standard Nestle-Aland text, print τὸ μυστήριον (to mystērion, the mystery) instead, because the manuscripts are divided, and some English translations follow that reading. The lesson Weighing a Variant gave you the tools to look at this. Notice what it means for preaching. A sermon that built a point on the word testimony, or on the word mystery, as though the whole verse turned on it, would be building on the one word in the verse that is uncertain. Two verses later, the words behind persuasive words of wisdom in 2:4 are among the most tangled in the letter textually, and the SBLGNT prints a shorter form than many manuscripts. A preacher with Greek is a preacher who knows where not to stand.

The point of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 is stated in its last verse: 'so that your faith would not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power' (2:5). Paul did not refuse reasoning or skill. Acts says he reasoned every Sabbath, 'trying to persuade Jews and Greeks alike' (Acts 18:4), and his letters to Corinth are some of the most carefully argued writing in the New Testament. What he refused was a kind of speech that would make their faith depend on how impressive he was. That is the danger of Greek in the pulpit. It can become a new eloquence, a display that makes the congregation admire the preacher's learning and quietly conclude that they could never understand the Bible without him. 'Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up' (1 Corinthians 8:1). In the SBLGNT, ἡ γνῶσις φυσιοῖ (hē gnōsis physioi, knowledge puffs up) is the whole warning in three words.

The first way is display. 'In the original Greek' is a phrase that can be said for good reasons, but it is often said for bad ones: to make a point sound weightier than it is, to win an argument by appeal to an authority the hearers cannot inspect, or simply to be admired. Display teaches the congregation something false, that the Bible is a locked book whose key belongs to the pastor. Paul's comment on tongues in the gathered church applies by analogy: 'in the church, I would rather speak five coherent words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue' (1 Corinthians 14:19). Paul was speaking of a spiritual gift, not of Greek, and the analogy should not be pressed. But the principle is his: in the gathering, speech is measured by whether it builds others up. Greek words that the hearers cannot understand or check are, for them, a kind of unknown tongue.

The second way is undermining their Bible. A preacher who says your translation gets this wrong, when the translation has in fact made a legitimate choice among readings the Greek allows, has done two harms. He has taught something untrue about the translation, and he has taught his people to distrust the Bible they will read alone on Monday. Remember what the lessons Why Translations Differ and Weighing a Translation Yourself showed: most differences between good translations are differences of judgment, not errors. The BSB's though He was rich in 2 Corinthians 8:9, or its something to be grasped in Philippians 2:6, are careful choices. If your congregation reads a different translation, or the Bible in their own language, the Greek should normally help you explain what their translation is doing, not correct it in front of them.

The third way is myth. Some Greek claims circulate in sermons for generations and are simply false. The track has named several, and they are worth naming again because you will hear them. Dynamis, power, in Romans 1:16 does not mean dynamite; dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in the 1860s and named from the Greek word, and reading a modern explosive back into Paul is what D. A. Carson, in Exegetical Fallacies, called semantic anachronism. Agapē is not a word invented by Christians for a uniquely divine love; it and its verb were in ordinary use, and in John 21:15-17 whether the change between two verbs for love carries weight is a real debate, as the lesson Word Studies Done Right set out. The aorist does not mean once for all, as Frank Stagg showed in a 1972 article. And ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia, assembly, church) does not mean the called-out ones simply because it is built from ἐκ (ek, out) and a root meaning to call. In the first century the word meant an assembly; Luke uses it of the riotous town meeting at Ephesus (Acts 19:32, and 19:41 in the BSB, which the SBLGNT prints at the end of 19:40), and of the city's lawful assembly (19:39), and nobody in that crowd had been called out of anything. That is the root fallacy, and Carson's book gives a famous example of the same mistake with ὑπηρέτης (hypēretēs, servant, attendant) in 1 Corinthians 4:1, preached as an under-rower in a galley on the strength of its parts.

All three failures have one thing in common. They use Greek to make the preacher larger and the text smaller. Display makes him impressive. Undermining makes him indispensable. Myth makes him interesting. In each case the hearers' faith is being asked to rest, in a small way, on the wisdom of a man. The cure is not to stop studying Greek. It is to let the Greek do its work in the study and to bring into the pulpit only what serves the hearers' understanding of the text in front of them.

Most of the Greek you do in a week should never be mentioned on Sunday. It will show itself in the accuracy of what you say, in the questions you no longer get wrong, and in the confidence with which you explain a hard verse. That is the main fruit of Greek in the pulpit: a preacher who is right more often. But some weeks a point from the Greek does deserve to be said aloud. Here are four tests. A point that passes none of them stays in your notebook.

First test: does it change the meaning the hearers would otherwise take? If your congregation would naturally read a verse one way, and the Greek shows clearly that it means something else, that is worth explaining. Philippians 2:5 is an example: most hearers will not notice that the second half has no verb, and the choice of verb shapes how they hear the whole passage. A sentence of explanation, in plain words, helps them hear it rightly.

Second test: do the translations in the room differ? If half your congregation reads one translation and half another, or the pew Bible differs from what people have on their phones, they will notice the difference and wonder. Explaining briefly why the translators differ, without declaring a winner unless the evidence clearly requires it, builds trust in both translations and in you.

Third test: does it let them see something in their own Bible? Some of the best uses of Greek in the pulpit never mention a Greek word at all. In Philippians 2, you can say: look at verse 3, where Paul tells you to consider others more important than yourselves, and now look at verse 6, where Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped; Paul has used the same verb for both. The congregation can see that in English once you point to it. You have used your Greek to open their Bible rather than to replace it.

Fourth test: does it guard against a misreading they have probably heard? If a myth about a word is common in your area, and your passage contains the word, it may be worth one gentle sentence to correct it, without mocking the preachers who taught it. People who have been told for years that dynamis means dynamite deserve to know, kindly, that the power of the gospel is greater than an explosive and not the same as one.

If a point passes one of those tests, it may go in. Even then, ask whether it serves the main idea of the sermon. The Homiletics lesson One Main Idea taught that every part of a sermon should serve its one idea, and a fascinating Greek detail that does not serve it is a distraction, however true. One Greek moment in a sermon is usually enough. Many sermons need none.

When you do use a Greek point, say it so that the people can follow it, check it and keep it. Some simple habits help. Say the word Paul chose here, or the word Luke uses, rather than the Greek really says. The first points to the author; the second sets the Greek against the hearers' Bible. Pronounce a Greek word once, if at all, and then use the English. Never parse in the pulpit. Nobody in the room needs to hear aorist active indicative third person singular; they need to hear only what the parsing contributes to the sense, such as he became poor, or this is a command, or Paul is giving the reason for what he has just said. Keep the explanation to a sentence or two. And always bring the people back to the text in their hands: so when you read the word grace in verse 9, you can hear what Paul meant by it.

Here is the difference in practice, worked on the word links in Philippians 2 from the last lesson. A poor version: in the original Greek, the word in verse 6 is hēgēsato, the aorist middle of hēgeomai, and the Greek scholars tell us it is the same root as hēgoumenoi in verse 3, which your English Bible hides from you. Every clause of that is true, and almost every clause does harm. It names forms nobody can hold in their head, it appeals to scholars the hearers cannot consult, and it tells them their Bible is hiding something. A better version: look at verse 3. Paul says, in humility consider others more important than yourselves. Now look at verse 6. Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Paul has used the same word twice, on purpose. What he asks of you in verse 3, Christ did first in verse 6. The second version uses exactly the same Greek knowledge. It simply leaves the Greek in the study and brings the people to the verses.

The same habit works for a translation difference. Suppose half the room reads a Bible that says in 2 Corinthians 8:9 though he was rich, and the other half one that says being rich. A poor version declares one of them wrong. A better version says: your Bibles put this two ways, and both are faithful. Paul's words say simply that Christ was rich. Some translators add the word though, to bring out that his riches might have kept him from becoming poor and did not. Either way, the point is the same: the one who had everything chose poverty for your sake. That takes thirty seconds, it makes both groups trust their Bibles more, and it makes the main point land rather than distracting from it.

Say your confidence honestly, using the column from your notebook. A certain point can be said plainly. A probable one takes a word like most likely, or many scholars think. A possible one should either be left out or offered openly as a suggestion: one way of reading this, which some careful scholars hold, is. Do not raise your confidence in the pulpit beyond what it was in the study. 'We do not practice deceit, nor do we distort the word of God' (2 Corinthians 4:2) applies to the degree of certainty you claim as much as to the content.

Where the church is divided over what a word means, as with harpagmos in Philippians 2:6 or the two verbs for love in John 21, the pulpit is not usually the place to argue the case. If the debate matters for the sermon, state the readings briefly and fairly, say what all of them agree on, and preach that. If it does not matter for the sermon, leave it for a teaching class where people can ask questions.

Many students of this course preach in a language other than English, from a Bible translated into Swahili, Hausa, Amharic, Tagalog, Portuguese or another tongue, sometimes through an interpreter. In that setting the Greek is even more valuable and even more open to misuse. Use it to understand what your people's translation is doing, and to explain it well. If you become convinced that the translation in your language has a real error, not merely a different choice, do not announce it from the pulpit first. Check it with someone who knows more, speak to the translators or the Bible Society if you can, and in the pulpit explain the verse rather than condemn the book. A congregation that has only one Bible in its language needs to be able to trust it.

The rest of the craft belongs to the Homiletics track, and the lessons there are the right next step for any of this. Exegesis for the Pulpit shows where the study of words and grammar sits within the whole preparation of a sermon, so that Greek is one step among several rather than the whole of it. One Main Idea shows how to make every detail, Greek ones included, serve the sermon's single idea. Words for the Ear explains why technical vocabulary rarely lands when heard, and how to turn a point into plain spoken language. Knowing Who Is Listening helps you picture the people in the room, the elderly widow and the visiting schoolboy, before you decide whether a Greek point will help them. And Windows Into the Text shows that the best illustration is often the text's own world explained vividly, which is where a little Greek, used quietly, can help most.

Come back to the reason Paul gives. He preached as he did 'so that your faith would not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power' (1 Corinthians 2:5). That is the final test of any Greek in a sermon. When the people go home, is their faith resting more on the preacher's learning, or more on the word of God, now a little clearer to them? A well-used Greek point leaves them more confident that they can read their own Bible. A badly used one leaves them more dependent on the man who knows Greek.

There is a kind of freedom in this. You do not need to prove, on Sunday, that you studied hard on Wednesday. The congregation will know you studied by whether what you say is true, clear and rooted in the passage. Paul resolved 'to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified' (2:2). A preacher with Greek can make the same resolution, and the Greek will serve it far better than it would serve display: it will help him say exactly what the text says about Christ, and nothing that it does not.

Your practical step this week. Take the passage you studied with the routine of Greek in the Study, or Philippians 2:5-11 from the last lesson. In your notebook, list every Greek observation you made. Beside each one, write which of the four tests it passes, if any: changes the meaning, translations differ, lets them see it in their Bible, guards against a misreading. Cross out every observation that passes none. For those that remain, choose at most one for your sermon, and write out exactly what you will say about it in no more than two sentences, without using a grammatical term, and ending by pointing the hearers to a verse in their own Bible. Read those two sentences aloud to someone in your church who has never studied Greek, and ask them to tell you back what they understood.